Multiform Balance occurs when creators take care to make each multiple form of a Shapeshifter, such as a Henshin Hero, a Swiss Army Hero or a Morph Weapon-type Swiss Army Weapon, useful in its own way. The easiest way to do this is to make each one suited for a certain tactical situation or to use certain tactics. For example a werewolf doing a Partial Transformation to Wolf Man may not be able to talk, but can still use weapons and has greater strength than a man, but isn't as fast as a wolf.

Examples:

Tony Tony Chopper from One Piece. Eating a Zoan-type devil fruit gave him three forms, and he gained four more (plus a superpowered berserker form) through his Rumble Ball. And post-Time Skip, he now has control of his berserker form, albeit at the cost that he can only maintain it for three minutes, and is still too exhausted to move for several hours afterwards.

Battle Story and other variants give us the Liger Zero X (an Empire version designed for electronic warfare) and various packs for the Berserk Fury that replace its iconic "eggbeaters" with high-powered boosters (Sturm Fury), hybrid particle cannons (Jagd Fury), or a high-output reactor and missile pods (the Tyran series).

In Dragon Ball Z, after the Super Saiyan transformation starts being So Last Season, several new variants on it are introduced. The original form becomes a Jack of All Stats, while the "3rd Grade" Super Saiyan becomes a Mighty Glacier (it actually makes the user too slow to land hits, making the form useless), while Super Saiyan 2 makes the user even more of a Lightning Bruiser than fighters in Dragon Ball Z usually are. Most of the other forms shown are Awesome but Impractical for various reasons (usually that they consume too much energy to use for very long).

Animorphs: While each of the kids have their own unique morphs, there are several occasions when they've morphed the same animal (sometimes to exploit the fact that the animal goes into a stupor when being acquired, long enough for them to escape, like the hammerhead shark or the T Rex). The inverse of the trope bites them in the ass when they attack the Yeerk pool all in polar bear morph and nearly die.

Live Action TV

A recurring motif of Kamen Rider shows, especially the Heisei era. It's gotten to the point where tie-in movies and DVDs frequently feature a new exclusive form in addition to the standard ones from the show. Some examples:

Kuuga: Joke Character (Growing), Jack of All Stats (Mighty and Rising Mighty), Fragile Speedster (Dragon and Rising Dragon), Glass Cannon (Pegasus and Rising Pegasus), Mighty Glacier (Titan and Rising Titan), Lightning Bruiser (Amazing Mighty), Super Mode (Ultimate). Decade adds a new one that goes Up to Eleven (Rising Ultimate). Kuuga is also the only series to really adhere to the officially listed disadvantages of each form; when gaining Dragon Form he finds he's much more agile, able to jump to reach an opponent who prefers rooftops to streets, but when he finally gets there, he fights his physical strength is much less mighty than it was in Mighty Form and he gets smacked down.

Decade: He's loaded thanks to Power Copying other Riders, primarily the nine preceding him, and all of their forms: Kuuga, Agito, Kabuto, Den-O, and Kiva's forms are listed above; the forms for Ryuki, Faiz, Blade, Hibiki, and Decade himself are Jack of All Stats for each one's default and Super Mode for their enhanced forms (Ryuki Survive, Faiz Blaster, Blade King Form, Armed Hibiki, and Decade Complete); plus three Lightning Bruisers (Faiz Axel, Blade Jack Form, and Crimson Hibiki) and one Joke Character (Blank Ryuki). Although his mimicry powers don't seem to extend to the others' Super Modes as he's not shown using those himself in-show.

In Kamen Rider Gaim, the characters can exchange gear with one another to access several different "Arms" forms, but to keep things simple, we'll only list the Riders with multiple forms and only the Arms they have access to by default.

The Hishu (human) form is most likely to pass among mortals and best suited for social dealings.

The Dalu (wolf-man) form allows added strength while retaining human form, but still pings Lunacy a little.

The Gauru (monster two-legged wolf) form is the strongest, most damaging form, but can only be used for a limited time and is locked in a state of rage that makes any action but attacking something a failure.

The Urshul (dire wolf) form is fastest of all and quite strong, but will still ping Lunacy heavily.

The Urhan (wolf) form will blend in most easily in nature and could maybe pass for a wolfdog in urban environments.

The four bestial forms can also be seen as references to different archetypes of werewolf transformation. Urhan clearly owes its lineage to most forms of actual mythological depictions of the werewolf. Dalu is based on the iconic "wolfman" form of film, first seen in Universal Horror's The Wolfman (1941). Urshul arguably has some mythological basis, but can most easily be connected to the werewolf as depicted in An American Werewolf in London. Finally, Gauru resembles the now-iconic "manwolf" that has become heavily associated with werewolves in modern culture and which can be arguably traced back to film via The Howling.

Generation V's Darmanitan has a normal form that is a Glass Cannon, but when certain Darmanitans' Hit Points go below half they automatically switch to Zen Mode, which is a Mighty Glacier. This was a poorly-done attempt, though - all the damage is received before the switch, and getting knocked out in one hit is not too unlikely in the glass cannon form. Even if they do survive, the higher defensive stats are not very useful with less than half Hit Points left.

Generation VI introduces Mega Evolutions, more powerful forms of certain Pokémon that can only be accessed in battle. The catch is that it requires using a held item specific to each Pokémon, which means they cannot use any other item. Most of these are worthwhile, though a few (such as Garchomp's) don't give enough to be worth the lack of an item, or simply don't do enough to make a bad Pokémon usable.

Kingdom Hearts II has its Valor and Wisdom Forms spiking the player's physical and magical stats (respectively) at the cost of the other. This is then averted once the Master Form and Final Form are picked up, which balance melee attacks and magic by making both of them highly effective.

Druid shapeshifting in World of Warcraft could be considered this, with forms tailored to each of their four talent specialisations plus a couple of utility forms. The default form (AKA "caster" form) is for the Combat Medic and specialisation adds a temporary Tree Form with even more enhanced healing. Cat form is a Fragile Speedster that deals damage. Bear form is a Stone Wall specialising in getting attention of enemies from more squishy members of the group. Moonkin form (available via talent specialization; caster form suffices before that) is a Glass CannonSquishy Wizard. While all Druids have access to Bear Form and Cat Form, they don't work very well for non-Feral Druids.

Kheldians in City of Heroes are another example, though they don't start out with all the forms. Nova form is a Glass Cannon, Dwarf form is a Stone Wall, and with the basic human form being somewhere in between, and having a much greater choice of attacks, including the ability to deal decent damage at close range. Some players try to specialise in only one form, but by most accounts the best choice is to make use of all three forms, swapping as necessary.

The various offensive powers in Prototype are balanced like this. Claws are quite fast and have a slow ranged attack composed of spikes erupting from the ground and impaling the target from below, Hammerfist gives massively devastating splash damage attacks with really slow speed, the Whipfist has awesome range, anti-air attacks and crowd control capabilities in exchange for power and the Blade is similar to the Claws but replaces the latter's impalement attack with a brutally powerful aerial attack that can One-Hit Killtanks.

Breath of Fire IV: When Ryu transforms, whichever form he chooses provides a percentage boost to his stats, resulting in the following arrangements: Master of None (Aura), Jack of All Stats (Wyvern/Weyr), Mighty Glacier (Behemoth/Mammoth), Lightning Bruiser (Myrmidon/Knight), Glass Cannon (Mutant/Punk) and Super Mode (Kaiser). Fou-lu's dragons roughly follow the same percentage boosts as Ryu's; just replace Aura, Wyvern and Kaiser with Astral, Serpent and Tyrant (Fou-lu doesn't have Myrmidon or Mutant, and he has a Behemoth like Ryu), respectively.

Several heroes have alternate costumes, and a change in costume also means a change in class. (ex.: Spider-Man, an Infiltrator by default, can also become either a Scrapper with his Future Foundation outfit, or don the Black Suit, turning into a Bruiser.)

Punisher has the ability to switch classes at will, each class has its own attack unique from the other and can be either target single or group enemies.

Super Smash Bros. Wii U/3DS has Shulk. He's a Mechanically Unusual Fighter whose playstyle centers around a Stance System composed of 5 Monado Arts. Each of those arts boost one of his stats for a few seconds at the cost of reducing others. For example, "Jump" increases his jump distance while lowering his defence, and "Smash" increases his launch ability at the cost of weaker attacks and lower defence against launching.

Webcomics

The Were race in Dan and Mab's Furry Adventures . They have three forms, human, normal and 'primal' (animal), which basically form a Sliding Scale of Magicalness. As humans, they're immune to magic; in their normal form, they're Muggles with some minor bonuses; and as animals, their magical power is increased.

Ben 10 subverts this in the first season (and hints of it remain in the newer seasons). The first season started things off with ten aliens, each with different super powers, but as the original series came to a close, Ben had access to even more aliens. But considering Ben is ten years-old and not a tactical hero, he almost always used Fourarms. How well this worked out for him depended on how many times he's transformed that day.

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